


Worship is a War Song

by boos



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Moving In Together, Teen Angst, Unrequited Crush, crushes on boys who are trying to kill u ya know. no big deal, except in a friendly family way u know, i try to be funny u guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:44:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6465469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boos/pseuds/boos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Watch out, one day I'll get revenge and you’ll wake up with your hair dyed a bright yellow, and it will be all your fault because you can’t stop talking shit.” Thalia warns him.</p><p>“Yeah,” Percy agrees as he puts the bottle back and browses through the others, “that’s my sin. When I die and go to the Underworld, I’ll be judged on my shit talking.”</p><p>“Honestly, you will.”</p><p>(AU where Thalia lives with the Jacksons in the months between The Sea of Monsters and The Titan's Curse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worship is a War Song

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a hoe for percy and thalia's relationship and also both of them being in love w/ the same shitty boy. i didn't get enough of that SO I WROTE MY OWN
> 
> this is more a character study on percy and thalia on how they deal w/ luke and being children of war than it is anything else, but i hope you still like it!!! thank u for reading ❤

The first thing she sees when she wakes up is blonde hair, curly and sticking out from a ponytail. This should change something in her, should make a hot flash of recognition strike across her chest, this should _do_ something. It doesn’t.

 

The only thing Thalia knows is that her body hurts and the face of the girl above her is not one she knows. The girl has a scar above her eyebrow and another one that cuts down the side of her jaw, her eyes are grey and worried and crying, maybe? Thalia thinks she’s crying.

 

The second thought she has is, _Am I dead?_ Thalia remembers dying. _Is this girl weeping over my corpse?_ She remembers her body being torn apart and then devoured, the angelic screaming of two people in the background. Children. They were children and they were a distant hum by the end when Thalia stopped being a person, being a body, and started just _being._ There is no way she got her body back.

 

Suddenly a boy takes her in his hands and a boy cradles her head on his shoulder. When he whispers to her that it will be okay, she certainly thinks she’s dead. Thalia tells him this much.

 

“Dying.” she whispers to him, her voice croaky and unused. Her head is throbbing.

 

The boy throws his head back behind him to yell. “Someone get some ambrosia and nectar, please!”

 

“Dying,” she tells him again, “I had a dream I was dying.”

 

When he turns back to her, Thalia notices immediately that his eyes are green. Seawater green, murky green, leaf green, it doesn’t matter, but they shine at her in the dark and she thinks she knows him.

 

He looks down at her, the light freckles on his skin twisting with confusion. “Who are you?” he asks but his face tells her he doesn’t really want an answer.

 

An answer is unavoidable. She looks straight at him. _I don’t know. I just am._ is what her instincts tell her, but the rational part of her brain overpowers. The rational part of her brain kicks in and sends her body into stasis. She suddenly can’t feel her legs anymore.

 

“I am Thalia. Daughter of Zeus.” Thalia tells him, her voice calm and pristine by some miracle of adrenaline, and the way his face instantly crumples at that is enough to have her know she is not dead, and enough to have her suddenly wish she was.

 

__

 

At eight on a Monday night just at the end of a hot, sticky, New York summer, Percy opens up his front door to get a face full of Thalia Grace. This, out of all things, is not on the list of possibilities he expected to show up behind his door on a Monday night. One of their weird neighbors asking for a favor? Probably. A very polite mythological monster ready to punch Percy in the face? Maybe. His Dad taking off time from his very important job of ruling the ocean and wearing Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirts to come and have some old-fashion bonding time with his son? Doubtful, but Percy would put it as more probable than _Thalia Grace_ standing on his doorstep with her hair all cut off, a bag of donuts in her hand, and a sheepish smile on her face.

 

There’s a duffel slung around her shoulder and she’s traded in the ratty black clothes that she was buried in for the last five years for a simple orange Camp Half-Blood tee with the sleeves cut off and some mean combat boots.

 

“Hey.” she says, as casually as she can, “Can I come in? I brought donuts.” Thalia shakes the bag for emphasis like Percy couldn’t see them.

 

“Um.” is all Percy gets out before his mother comes up behind him to see who’s ringing their doorbell, and with a shocked expression, invites Thalia in.

 

This is how Percy ends up living with a daughter of Zeus for nine months.

 

__

 

“Chiron said I could leave, but only if I stayed close by and with people he knew I was safe with.” Thalia explains, clapping her hands together in an effort to get the white donut powder off her fingertips. “I said I didn’t know anyone. He gave me a list of options, and at the end, he said, ‘Sally Jackson has always been known to be a generous woman.’ and I thought that was the winning one.”

 

Percy’s mom has her Mother face on while listening, which he likes to describe as a mixture of worry, over analyzation, and determination. By the time Thalia is done with her speech, Percy is begging the Gods that his mother politely turns her away with some food, a smile, and maybe a list of other places she could live.

 

Instead, what he gets is, after only a quick glance to his direction, his mother saying immediately, “Of course you can stay with us. Of course, Thalia. We’ll need to work out a few things like where you’ll sleep –”

 

“Oh, anywhere. I’ll sleep anywhere, Ms. Jackson. In the yard, if I have to.”

 

Sally laughs at this. “No, don’t worry, we’ll have you set up. We need to work out a few things, but we’ll have you set up.”

 

His mother and him do not seem to be on the same wavelength.

 

It’s not that he doesn’t like Thalia, it’s more that they are now both in line to be the Great Prophecy Kid, which makes their relationship hard to define and weirdly competitive, and he intended to use this school year as a way to at least attempt to get back on track with his grades and _try_ to make new friends. He didn’t expect he would have to drag along a girl who’s been kind of dead for the last five years while doing all that.

 

Five minutes later, after Sally’s called Percy out into the hall to help get sheets for the pull-out couch, Percy pulls her aside. “You didn’t even _ask_ me.”

 

She looks him straight in the eyes and says, “Because you would have said no.”

 

He grits his teeth. That is true. “Mom,” he says, “did you even consider that having _two_ demigod kids, who are spawn of the big head honchos, living in the same house might not be a good idea? That it might put you in danger?”

 

“You have to trust that I would not make any decision I didn’t think was wise. I kept you a live for all those years, didn’t I?” she smiles at him before she continues, and he can’t help but smile too – and roll his eyes a little bit. “I trust Chiron to protect you two, to protect us.” Suddenly, his mother’s voice drops down to a whisper. “I know you two aren’t close and I know… the complications of having you two be together are risky, but I would much prefer to know she’s in safe hands with someone who knows how to _deal_ with the possibilities of those complications rather than someone who doesn’t.”

 

At this, Sally glances into the kitchen and her son follows her lead. They both see the silhouette of a girl, sitting at their table, her feet jiggling on the footrest of the seat. Her choppy hair that she’s obviously cut herself shines under the yellow light of their tiny apartment, and her face is looking away, out the window above their sink, into their beautiful view which happens to be the brick wall of a building.

 

Percy’s mother turns back to him, her gaze steady and sympathetic as she whispers, “She doesn’t have anyone else, Percy.”

 

He wants to argue that she does, that she’s got Annabeth – even if Annabeth _is_ now all the way across the country – that she’s got other demigods to go to, but Sally exits after that and Percy is left in the hallway with pillowcases in his hands. He looks back at Thalia through the kitchen doorway and he can see her biting her lip, twisting her hands.

 

__

 

Chiron makes her go to school – which would be fine if it wasn’t, you know, the same exact school Percy’s starting at this year. Two demigod children of the Big Three near each other for hours upon hours at a time, for nine months. Percy is almost ready to start writing his will right then and there.

 

Chiron assures them he’s provided extra measures at the school so that they will be as safe as they can – which isn’t much because no demigod is ever _completely_ safe – and that they are not to worry. This doesn’t stop any of them from worrying, but it sure helps them all pretend they’re fine with it.

 

Thalia is in the same year as him for the fact that she hasn’t been to school in a very long time and it’s just convenient. The first month is hell, as all new schools are, and Percy has enough anxiety about everything to just about feel nauseous every night. Thalia seems to be having a similar problem, she just expresses it in different ways. Halfway through the first month she comes home with one side of her hair shaved off. Percy thinks it looks really cool, but he would rather be beheaded than tell her this. Three weeks later, he walks into the kitchen to see her cooking with electric green dye on her bangs. Percy also thinks it looks super cool, begrudgingly.

 

Thalia keeps it up. A week later she’s got an eyebrow piercing. Two weeks and then her hair’s got a tint of purple. By the end of the first three months at school, her hair has turned from purple to faded pink to streaks of turquoise, her eyebrow is still pierced and now she has a septum ring, and she was in talks to get a lip piercing, but Percy’s mom talked her down from that one.

 

Percy asks her one day, his bitter jealousy perhaps streaking through, “How do you keep getting piercings? Don’t you need an adult for that?”

 

Thalia shrugs from her place on the couch. She’s playing one of the Pokemon games on an old gameboy. “I know people.” she tells.

 

“You’ve been foliage for the last five years.” Percy points out.

 

Thalia gets that look on her face that she does every time he talks about her being a tree, like she’s personally offended that he’s making a big deal out of it. “Silena Beauregard’s uncle owns a piercing shop. The Beauregard’s are nice people.”

 

Percy tilts his head at that. Silena Beauregard doesn’t seem like the type of girl who would talk to Thalia. “You’re friends with Silena?”

 

Thalia shrugs, her eyes glued to her screen where she’s currently fighting a beedrill. “I guess.”

 

Percy mulls this over. Why is he not friends with Silena? Is he not the cooler Prophecy Child?

 

Thalia suddenly looks up at him with a wicked smile. “Why do you ask? You jealous Silena wants to be friends with me, the beautiful, amazing, Thalia Grace? And not you, the stinky, garbage, Perseus Jackson?”

 

Percy groans at her in response, his cheeks flushing despite the stupidity of the question. He walks into the kitchen in an attempt to ignore her, but her cackling laughter follows him there.

 

__

 

They IM Annabeth sometimes, when she’s alone and bored, which is not often, as she always seems to be busy with homework. Thalia and Percy smile sheepishly when she tells them this, since both of them have stacks of schoolwork piling up in their rooms large enough to rival Mt. Everest. Annabeth pretends she doesn’t know this and lets them get away with it.

 

They also only call her sometimes because their conversations are stilted, at best. Thalia and Annabeth have been without each other for years, and there’s something missing there at the moment, a lost piece of the puzzle. They all know who it is, but no one ever mentions a name. How do you casually bring up the topic that you miss the boy who’s currently fighting a war against you?

 

There are rare moments where they both laugh at something stupid Percy says and it feels like a friendship he missed out on for years that he’s only getting a glimpse of. Sometimes they talk about things that he doesn’t understand or make references to their pasts in ways that Percy will never know, and although those times make him feel like his friendship with Annabeth pales in comparison to the history she has with Thalia, in a way it makes him feel happy. It’s nice to know Thalia and Annabeth’s relationship is not always awkward and stuttering, but sometimes has a life of its own. It’s a start. A very tiny, very baby start.

 

During one of these IMs, it’s late at night and they’re watching Annabeth organize her work for tomorrow. Thalia and her are talking idly about something as Percy stares off in the distance and remembers he also has something to print out. He excuses himself, neither of the girls really minding or listening, and logs onto the laptop they have on the coffee table to bring up his essay.

 

As he unlocks the computer from hibernation, it opens and automatically brings up the last page it was on. It’s a news article with the heading _Beryl Grace Dies in Car Crash?_ from two years ago. It shows a picture of a woman, bright and beautiful blonde hair, the same blue eyes Thalia has, and then next to her a picture is of a car smashed into a tree. Percy doesn’t have to read it to know who it is, what it means. Instead, he swallows and exits out of the browser, prints his paper, and walks back to the kitchen like nothing had happened at all.

 

He mentions it once, a week later when his mom isn’t home yet and they’re cooking dinner for themselves. Thalia’s asked him the age old question, _Why the fuck is everything you eat blue?_ and Percy’s just finished telling her the story, how it’s just his Mom’s thing, when he asks, “What about you? What was your mom like?”

 

The way Thalia’s eyes harden into a glare at him is enough to have him let her dodge the question and never bring it up again.

 

__

 

In their four month at the new school, they realize that by this point they’re not going to make any friends, and resolve to the inevitable; that they will just have to be each other’s friends. It’s an easier transition than either of them think.

 

They’re at the drugstore a couple blocks away from the house one night. Thalia is browsing over five different colors of black nail polish like any of them look different from each other and Percy is grabbing fistfuls of chocolate bars like it’s his job. He’s had a bad day. He failed an English test and tore a rip in his new jeans and some kid spilled orange juice on him during lunch. He deserves these goddamn Nestle bars. He will fight to the death for these goddamn Nestle bars.

 

“Which one do you think I should get?” Thalia’s voice wanders to him from an aisle over. He chucks in a couple of peanut butter cups for her before he walks to help her decide.

 

“I think you should get this one.” he comments, pulling out a very gaudy, very sparkly gold polish. Thalia rolls her eyes. “This could be your new hair color, you know. Very grand.” He puts the bottle up to her hair for emphasis, where the streaks have turned white for the moment. Percy thinks he likes this hair the best.

 

“Watch out, one day I'll get revenge and you’ll wake up with your hair dyed a bright yellow, and it will be all your fault because you can’t stop talking shit.” she warns him.

 

“Yeah,” Percy agrees as he puts the bottle back and browses through the others, “that’s my sin. When I die and go to the Underworld, I’ll be judged on my shit talking.”

 

“Honestly, you will.”

 

After Thalia is sufficiently satisfied with her choice of color, they go to the register and Percy lugs up his cart of chocolate. The man behind the counter looks like he eats only hot pockets in his off time and unironically loves memes, but also like he would rather be anywhere but here. When he looks down at their finds – a lot of candy and one single nail polish bottle – he sighs and starts ringing them up.

 

It’s at this moment that a monster decides to burst through the whole front of the store, making a grand old entrance.

 

It’s a fucking Dracanae and the man behind the counter immediately starts screaming, terrified at whatever the monster seems to be to him. Thalia has the immediate reaction of pulling out her can of mace and making it transform into her bronze spear. Percy, on the other hand, instantly grabs all of his chocolate – and Thalia's nail polish – and sprints out the very big gap where the storefront used to be.

 

Thalia screams, “Percy, what the fuck!” but manages to get a good stab on the Dracanae before chasing after him.

 

Eventually, Percy helps with the fight, but only after he’s successfully stored their goodies in a place out of the line of fire, he hopes. They kill the damn thing after a lot of grunting and glass shattering and as they watch the dust of it’s body dissolve into the atmosphere, cop sirens sound in the distance and they run. They run and they run and they run until the sirens are out of sight and Percy’s feet hurt. Thalia badgers him the whole way home (“I can’t believe you chose a Snickers bar over me!”) but there’s blood splattered on her cheek, a deep gross red-green, something obviously not human, and she keeps twitching her fingers and her lips, almost like she’s smiling. He watches her then, the way their conversation will lull after she’s run out of insults to yell and how she smiles at the ground for seconds at a time, her canines showing, how she shivers at moments where it's not cold. Percy wonders then, if this is the thing that helps her remind herself that she’s alive.

 

At home that night, when Thalia’s painting her nails with a shaky hand and concentrated stare at the kitchen table and Percy’s eating the chocolate bars he got for himself, he asks her, “What was it like being dead?”

 

Thalia’s got her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as though she’s concentrating really hard on performing precise brain surgery.

 

“Um,” she idles, “dunno. Don’t really remember. It doesn’t really feel like anything, as far as I can recall.” Then she pauses to finish a finger and looks back at her handy work. Percy can see from here that she’s got a bunch on the skin around her nail, but hey, these things come with practice.

 

“Nothing? It felt like nothing at all?”

 

She looks up at him, unimpressed. “Well, I wasn’t really in the Underworld now was I? I was sort of imprisoned in a pine tree.” Thalia pauses for a moment, and contemplates. “It felt more like a dream. Where you don’t understand what’s happening while it’s going on and nothing feels any different, but then you wake up and think ‘Did that happen? Did I do that? It felt so real.’”

 

Percy hums as if he will ever fully understand.

 

“Are we done with your attempt at being philosophical? Come here and let me paint your nails.” Thalia tells him.

 

Percy smiles. “Let me finish this Butterfinger first.”

 

They walk into school tomorrow with their fingernails messily painted. Some boy keeps staring at Percy’s nails in his English class and Percy just puts his head down and pretends he’s asleep.

__

 

Percy and Thalia naturally butt heads. It’s what they do. Percy defeats her in Super Smash Brothers and Thalia beats him up with the couch pillows like she’s trying to kill a minotaur. Thalia eats the last of his pizza that he very specifically told her _not_ to eat and Percy ignores her for a solid three days like she doesn’t exist. It’s over the dumbest things, but the two of them treat any quarrel like some big, dramatic betrayal, so when they actually fight about something legitimate, it’s nasty.

 

Thalia comes home one day with a set snarl on her face and throws her bag on the couch only to greet Percy with, “Good afternoon, prophecy child.”

 

Percy’s already had a bad day. He woke up in the morning with enough anxiety to make him throw up three times and make his mother let him stay home from school. All he did the whole day was stay in bed with his hands clenched tightly around his blankets, falling in and out of sleep with his stomach in knots about everything and nothing. And then Thalia comes home with her canines showing like she’s ready to take a fucking bite out of everything he is, so when she calls him prophecy child, he responds in the exact way she wants him too.

 

“Shut up. For once, Thalia, shut up.” he tells her, sifting through the pantry aimlessly, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

 

She sticks her tongue out at him. “Oh no, poor baby who can’t deal with his precious life.”

 

He just shoots her a look of disgust. “Will you ever just fuck off.”

 

“Oh nooooo,” she moans as she sits down into one of the kitchen chairs and tilts it back until she could almost fall, “I hurt the prophecy child’s _feelings._ Which god will smite me into a pine tree this time?”

 

Percy raises an eyebrow back at her with a dead face. “I wouldn’t joke about that if I were you. You know how they are. You know how your father is.”

 

Thalia snorts. “Same to you, idiot. My father probably listens to all the shit you talk about him and is just waiting to strike you down.”

 

“And then _my_ father would strike you down before they even had my funeral.” Percy remarks. “Or maybe not, because my father’s actually a good person, unlike yours.”

 

Thalia laughs. “Your father’s a god. They’re all terrible, awful people – _things_ even. They’re not anywhere near people, that’s the point.”

 

Percy breathes out a puff of air that is probably supposed to mimic a laugh, but instead it falls short. “You sound just as stubborn as Luke.”

 

This makes the air in the room go dead silent.

 

“Don’t talk to me about Luke that way. Like you know him.” Thalia says, and then she continues, quieter, “You don’t know him like I do.”

 

There’s something about that that makes Percy’s blood _rage._ He spins around to look at her. Fuck the pantry, fuck food, fuck Thalia Grace.

 

“Is that so?” he asks, and her face immediately sets into an aggressive expression to match his own. “You’ve been dead for five years. What would you even know about him anymore?”

 

Thalia lets her chair drop down onto the kitchen tile again. “I’m sorry, you knew him for what, three minutes? Did he even actually talk to you like an actual person instead of the _child_ that you were?”

 

Percy laughs, and this time it’s loud but unmistakably hollow. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” There’s a rush in his gut that feels like the fast current of a river. “You think you’ll see him again and he’ll listen to you and come home, don’t you? Like you can do anything. Like he even cares about you anymore –”

 

“I _know_ he cares about me, Percy! I know he will always care about me.”

 

“He doesn’t care about _anyone_ anymore, Thalia. That’s why he’s waging a war against us.”

 

“He’s just misguided. He’s emotional and sometimes he leads with his heart! Sometimes he’s fucking stupid!” Thalia exclaims, like that’s any of that is an excuse.

 

“Yeah, well, sometimes I get emotional about my dad not being there – and so do you – but you don’t see us selling our souls to _Kronos_ , do you?” Percy yells this at her with such anger he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He clenches and unclenches his fists. “I knew him too, I did. I – I knew him too.” Percy grits his teeth as his eyes sting. “He was important to me too.”

 

Thalia doesn’t care about this. “Did you spend years fighting for your life with him? Were you there when he had no one else?  You saw what he wanted you to see. You don’t _know_ him.”

 

All Percy can does is yell, “ _Thalia,_ _you can’t save him!”_ and she grits her teeth like they’re marble she can break. A statue of her father from a museum that she can throw against the wall and watch it shatter. Her marble heart in Luke’s unforgiving hands, already on the floor, already cracked.

 

Percy – well Percy can’t do anything with an ocean in his veins like there’s a hurricane. _He was important to me too,_ Percy wants to say again. _He was important to me too. He was mine too._

 

Percy ends up running to his room as fast as he can and Thalia throws Sally’s favourite dishes against the wall so hard it creates cracks in the plaster. All Percy can think about while he’s burrowed into his bed is how much their anger is like their fathers.

 

And Luke. But he always thinks about Luke.

__

 

The week before winter break, Percy finds Thalia smoking a cigarette in the alley way of their building. He’s taking out the trash. She blows smoke near his face and doesn’t even attempt to hide it.

 

“It’ll kill you, you know.” he tells her.

 

She scoffs. “I’ve already died once.”

 

“Surprisingly,” Percy says, slamming the trash bin lid close, “that doesn’t stop you from dying a second time. I don’t think your dad will save you this time.”

 

Thalia blows smoke directly into his face then.

 

“You know,” Percy says as he coughs and waves the smoke away, his voice sincere despite his best efforts to stay mad at her, “I’m sorry for what I said, but you have to be sorry too. That’s how this works.”

 

Her mouth twists sourly, and she drops the cigarette to stub it out with her boot. Thalia abandons him there without any words.

 

She leaves to visit Annabeth the next morning.

__

 

Thalia’s been at Annabeth’s for a week when Percy wakes up with an IM from Annabeth in the middle of the night, her hair in far-flung curls and her face as alarmed as it was when she was almost eaten by Sirens. Thalia’s left, she says, Thalia’s run away, and Percy lays there and looks at his hands.

 

“Percy, you’re supposed to _do_ something!” Annabeth yells at him; she’s almost in tears.

 

“Let her go, Annabeth.” Percy tells her, and then even though he doesn’t completely believe it himself, he says, “She’ll be fine. She’ll come back eventually.”

 

Although neither of them say it, he can tell that the way Annabeth’s misty visage looks at him that she is also thinking about how Thalia’s left and gone for good; that she’s dead or forever lost with Luke.

 

In the end, though, Percy’s right. He wakes up one night to find Thalia bleeding all over their shared bathroom, her hands pushing against the gash on her gut in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Percy rushes toward her as her face drips with tears, and then he rushes away to get ambrosia and nectar. The thing is, ambrosia and nectar doesn’t really close open wounds, so there Percy is, with his mother’s old first aid kit, putting stitches through Thalia’s skin as she swallows down cries in the middle of the night.

 

After they’re done, they both lay on the floor of the shower, blood all over their hands and clothes, and Thalia sobs. She just sobs and sobs and Percy bites his lip and lets her.

 

Later, he asks her, “What happened?” And all Thalia will say, with tear tracks dried on her cheeks, is “I used to be so much stronger than this.”

 

He never asks her where she went. He lets her go to sleep as he gets blood and bleach and wipes away the stains before his mother wakes up.

 

__

 

“Why’d you leave?”

 

They’re both laying down on Percy’s bed, their heads hanging off the mattress and upside, blood rushing to their brains. Thalia keeps throwing a ball against the wall back and forth, back and forth, and when Percy asks her this question, it doesn’t stop her.

 

“Leave what?” She asks.

 

“Camp.” Percy replies, watching the therapeutic motion of the ball.

 

This makes Thalia squeeze the ball in between her palms and stare at the wall indefinitely. It’s a moment before she speaks again. “I don’t know. It was weird. I never actually got to see the camp before I died, you know? It was always sort of this nirvana for me. This image of a perfect world... And Luke. It felt weird... to be there without him. I know who he is now and what’s he’s doing, and I don’t like it, but still, you know? It was just weird.” There’s a wave of silence as Percy takes this in. They haven’t talked about Luke since The Fight and obviously whatever Thalia has gone through since then has made her opinion change to be somewhat sour.

 

“Every time Annabeth saw me,” Thalia starts off slow, like her mind is not in the present, “she looked at me like I was a ghost. Grover was worse. And I know they didn’t mean to, but it made me feel like a ghost too, like I was just floating around, doing nothing, watching everyone around me laugh and talk because they’d been there for years. And the worst part was knowing that I could have been one of those kids too, that maybe Luke could have stayed one of those kids if I’d been there.”

 

Percy refuses to think about a Luke that would have stayed. Percy refuses to think about a Luke that would have been happy.

 

So he asks about something else instead. “Why didn’t you stay at Annabeth’s? Because you can’t stand the way she looks at you?”

 

“No,” Thalia scoffs as though something is funny, “it was more that I think no matter how much she wants to say she doesn’t, there’s a part of her that blames me for not being there. There’s a part of her that’s angry I didn’t survive, that I didn’t save Luke.” Thalia tries to shrug it off, and then she laughs a hollow laugh. “Plus, I’m not sure that her father was thrilled to know the girl who was a runaway with his daughter was staying under his roof. Most parents don’t seem to like me, surprisingly.” She says this with a smirk to her voice.

 

“Wow, I can’t imagine why. I mean,” Percy starts and then gestures to her, dressed in all black, hair dyed, piercings glinting in the light, “you’re the picture perfect example of a Good Catholic Schoolgirl.”

 

Thalia laughs, for real this time, but her eyes seem glazed over and out of focus.

 

“Eighty-seven feet.” she whispers at the shellac of the wall, the white, white bumps of paint. “I was only eighty-seven feet away from the camp when I died. It takes maybe a minute to walk that, about fifteen seconds less if you run, and trust me, I was running.”

 

__

 

Fast forward 3 months and suddenly there is a tiny Nico Di Angelo hanging onto Percy’s every last word, no Annabeth, and a bright, mean Zoë Nightshade who bares her teeth at Thalia with such intensity Percy has to look away. Bianca is there too, but Percy is thirteen and his best friend just got dragged off a cliff and he will forget about Bianca consistently until Nico makes him promise to keep her safe, and even then, well.

 

Zoë and Thalia are a sight to be seen. They argue and bicker like old lovers, and when Zoë tells Thalia, _I told you he would leave. I told you boys are no good,_ Thalia’s face falls like her heart has been broken from memories.

 

But at night, when they finally get back to camp, Percy can see from his own cabin window Thalia kissing Zoë behind the Cabin One. He doesn’t mean to watch, but he finds interest in the way Thalia’s hand shake, the way they kiss with ferocity and anger, the way Zoë looks at her sadly every time they pull away. After a second or two, Percy has to look away. He thinks about Thalia. He thinks about Annabeth. He thinks about Luke.

 

__

 

It’s only when they’re camping out halfway through their journey to San Francisco do they broach the subject again.

 

Thalia and Percy are on watch while everybody else is asleep. Thalia eats a protein bar while keeping her eyes trained on Zoë’s soft face, Grover snores, and Bianca is not dead yet. The crickets click on the background of nature and Percy’s butt is cold from the dirt. He watches the way Thalia watches Zoë and so many questions pop up within his chest like fire.

 

He asks, “Did you love him? Luke?”

 

This makes Thalia scoff. She responds as if this is a casual situation, like maybe she’s been rehearsing this answer for months.

 

“Percy,” she remarks, “he was fifteen, I was fourteen, we were on the run from our parents, and constantly almost getting murdered. We were children playing at love, at best.” but the way that she says it is so unconvincing. It sounds like something she would say to herself when she’s laying awake in the middle of the night and can’t get to sleep, thinking about how she died and woke up years later to find out her best friend had turned into someone who was willing to put a knife against her neck.

 

So then he asks, “Did you love her?” and nods his head toward Zoë’s sleeping body.

 

Thalia’s mouth opens like she might say something, but she never responds. Her jaw clenches back in place instead. The crickets still click behind them.

 

__

 

It’s only after the battle do they have time to talk again, one-on-one. There hasn’t been a down moment on this journey since the night at their makeshift camp and Percy hasn’t talked to Thalia, the _real_ Thalia, not the girl who tries to act tough with her walls up, in a long time.

 

But they find each other, after. Thalia has blood all around her hands, Percy’s arms ache from holding up the sky, Bianca has been dead for days, and now Zoë takes up space in the sky instead of on the ground. These are all things that currently preside as dead weight in both of their chests, but later it will mean much more. Sleepless nights where Percy remembers promises he broke to a boy who will be in love with him for years and moments where Thalia remembers everyone she ever loved is dead and out of reach. But for now they bear it without thought, because that’s what heroes do; they get blood on their hands pretend it means nothing because the heat of battle overrides everything else.

 

Right now, they are still feeling the glow. Percy’s only just coming down from the adrenaline rush and his jeans are ripped and covered in mud; the fact that he’s currently lounging in the sand of the lake doesn’t make him any cleaner. They’re back at camp now – brought home new scars, new wounds, and new dead bodies. Thalia brings home a tiara from Artemis, woven silver and black, the only official sign she is now a Hunter. This is the first thing Percy fixates on when she finds him at the lake and leans down to sit beside him. There’s a jewel at the base of her forehead that sparkles a soft blue in the light; it brings out her eyes and her freckles, makes them fiercer even in any shadow.

 

He doesn’t ask her, _why did you do it?,_ because he knows why. It gives her a purpose, a cause, but most of all, it gives her a community she can grow into, not one she was forced to be apart of after years of isolation. Some part of it is for Zoë as well, but anybody who saw the way Thalia looked at Zoë would know that.

 

Thalia glances over at him with a tired smile, her teeth shoddy and crooked in the way most child soldiers are, and Percy gives the same smile back.

 

“Look at you, Perseus Jackson, you saved the day.” Thalia tells him as she leans back and looks at the fading sun. “Fought the fight, got the girl, _and_ made it out alive.”

 

Percy feels the urge to beg to differ as the tiny mythomagic figurine still weighs down his pocket, yet to be delivered to Nico, but the adrenaline of the fight chases those thoughts out of his mind as they tell him, _you’re the hero, you’re the hero, it’s you, you, you._

 

He smiles at Thalia once more and then looks out at the lake, the sunset reflecting off the ridges of water. “Yeah well, we’ll see if I can keep it up.”

 

Thalia knocks her shoulder against his and a sharp pain goes through the bruise on his skin. “You will, you’re the Prophecy Child™ now that I’m out of the running. Do me proud, kid.”

 

Thalia rests her head on Percy’s shoulder and looks out to the water too. He leans his head against her own and watches the flow of the waves, tries to feel them in his body and his skin, in his blood. “I will.” he tells her.

 

“I know.” Thalia says, so soft it might as well be a whisper, and Percy’s chest bursts with flames so hot it must be love.

 

The distant roaring of a bonfire crackles behind them and echoing laughs follow. In this moment, it is easy to forget they are kids fighting a war for their fathers. In this moment, all they are is a family.


End file.
